Orlando area can be deadly for teen drivers at holidays

Orlando is one of the deadliest metro areas in the nation for holiday-season crashes involving teen drivers, according to a study released Tuesday.

Orlando-Kissimmee ranked third among the country's 50 largest population centers, Allstate Insurance Co. announced. Only Tampa Bay and Jacksonville outpaced Orlando, the company found.

Areas notorious for rough driving, including New York City and Los Angeles, ranked safer than Orlando because they have better public transportation, said Amy Moore, an Allstate spokeswoman.

"When you look at those cities, they have much better mass-transit systems, so teens have a better way of going somewhere," Moore said.

In places like Orlando, however, families with two breadwinners don't have time to drive their children, so teens drive themselves, she said.

Traffic experts also say that drivers in rural areas or sprawling suburbs often go faster, which makes for deadlier crashes.

The study, which includes data from 2000 to 2007, tracked teen drivers age 15 to 19 involved in crashes from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day. Salt Lake City, Utah ranked safest in the nation.

During the study's time period, there were 39 fatal crashes involving teen drivers in the Orlando-Kissimmee metro area during the holiday season, compared with 59 in Tampa Bay and 29 in Jacksonville. The study calculated its rankings based upon teen-population figures in each area and other data on crashes.

Year-round, the Orlando-Kissimmee area is the second-deadliest in the nation behind Tampa Bay, according to Allstate figures. The insurance company recommends that teens and parents sign a safe-driving contract that sets rules on seat-belt use, nighttime driving, cell-phone calling and other behavior.

The Sunshine State has about 800,000 teen drivers, according to Florida Highway Patrol figures.

Since Thanksgiving Day, teen drivers were involved in four serious crashes in the Patrol's Troop D region, which includes most of Central Florida.

Two were fatal:

*On Monday, Travis Woernly, 19, of Titusville drove a Dodge pickup into the rear end of a Toyota that slowed to make a left-hand turn on Colonial Drive in east Orange County. The Toyota was pushed into oncoming traffic, and both its occupants died, the FHP said.

*On Saturday, Heather Marie Rogers, 19, of Clermont died after a wrong-way driver crashed head-on into her Chevrolet on State Road 50 between Clermont and Groveland, the agency said. The wrong-way driver also was killed.

Nationwide, the overall number of teen drivers involved in fatal crashes dropped 13 percent from 2000 to 2006, said Bernie Fette, an expert with the Texas Transportation Institute, which developed "Teens in the Driver Seat," an education program credited with reducing fatalities in that state.

That's thanks in part to stricter "graduated driver licensing programs," or state laws that let teen drivers gain full privileges gradually, Fette said.

These rules often regulate teen driving at night, the number of passengers in the car or the length of time a novice must use a learner's permit.

Florida's teen-licensing program was ranked as "fair" -- one ranking behind "good" and two above "poor" -- by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in 2008. Education efforts help lower the number of crashes, too, Fette said. Most teens and parents don't know that inexperience aside, driving at night -- not speeding, distractions, failure to wear a seat belt or alcohol -- is the biggest danger for teen drivers.